New York, New York
It’s a unionized town!

Teacher pay’s up,
And kids’ test scores are down.

The whole state’s run by
A gov who’s a clown.

New York, New York!
It’s a helluva town!

‘Puter would like to thank Gormogon operative Noah, who may or may not live in the Workers’ Paradise of Ciudad de Nueva Jork, for citing him to this takedown of the United Federation of Teachers in, of all places, the New Yorker.** Although the article is concerned with New York City’s schools, its observations are equally applicable across the state. ‘Puter speaks from experience, living Upstate and all. The article’s conclusion? Unions are good for neither children nor taxpayers.

Joel Klein, chancellor of New York City Public Schools states the underlying problem thus: “The three principles that govern our system are lockstep compensation, seniority, and tenure. All three are not right for our children.” Well put.

Read on for a description of the Rubber Room, where horrible teachers are sent for years as their firings wind through mandatory arbitration. Addled inhabitants of the Rubber Room complain of human rights violations, comparing it to terrorist prisons at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Yet this horrible, horrible teachers are being paid full salary, summers off, and accruing retirment and health benefits, just for sitting there reading from 8:15 to 3:15 each school day. If that’s Guantanamo, sign ‘Puter up.

The article is above all an indictment of a system where workers and their union masters hold almost godlike power. For example, one Patricia Adams was placed in the Rubber Room for several years, as she was found passed out in her classroom (full of kids), reeking of alcohol. For unknown reasons, the City schools agreed to let Ms. Adams back in the classroom provided she submit to random alcohol testing. In February 2009, Ms. Adams passed out in the school office holding a water bottle full of booze. According to the attending technician, Ms. Adams was so intoxicated, she was unable to blow into the breathalyzer. Yet the UFT got a known alcoholic back into the classroom, with kids. The article continues on with additional examples of teachers no student ought to have, protected by union rules and paid for their incompetence with taxpayer dollars.

‘Puter takes away from this article what he has always known. The education industry is no longer about kids. It is about protecting teachers and projecting union power to crush reform, regardless of the impact on education itself. UFT and Ms. Weingarten are reprehensible. It is their intransigence that has cost this country generation after generation of kids. No sensible person wants to screw teachers over, but in negotiating no meaningful teacher discipline, we get the education system we deserve. One in which bad teachers, unable to be fired, ruin children with impunity, without fear of consequences, for there are none.

After your Gormogons (mostly the Czar) solve the health care debacle, ‘Puter proposes we take up a new battle. Our cry will be “No unionizing against children and taxpayers.”

**’Puter encourages readers to send him ideas for posts, particularly about union abuses and financial issues. His address is to the left. ‘Puter’ll even let you live if you disagree with him, unlike the Czar, who has been known to hunt opponents down for sport.

'Puter

Always right, unless he isn’t, the infallible Ghettoputer F. X. Gormogons claims to be an in-law of the Volgi, although no one really believes this.

’Puter carefully follows economic and financial trends, legal affairs, and serves as the Gormogons’ financial and legal advisor. He successfully defended us against a lawsuit from a liquor distributor worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid deliveries of bootleg shandies.

The Geep has an IQ so high it is untestable and attempts to measure it have resulted in dangerously unstable results as well as injuries to researchers. Coincidentally, he publishes intelligence tests as a side gig.

His sarcasm is so highly developed it borders on the psychic, and he is often able to insult a person even before meeting them. ’Puter enjoys hunting small game with 000 slugs and punt guns, correcting homilies in real time at Mass, and undermining unions. ’Puter likes to wear a hockey mask and carry an axe into public campgrounds, where he bursts into people’s tents and screams. As you might expect, he has been shot several times but remains completely undeterred.

He assures us that his obsessive fawning over news stories involving women teachers sleeping with young students is not Freudian in any way, although he admits something similar once happened to him. Uniquely, ’Puter is unable to speak, read, or write Russian, but he is able to sing it fluently.

Geep joined the order in the mid-1980s. He arrived at the Castle door with dozens of steamer trunks and an inarticulate hissing creature of astonishingly low intelligence he calls “Sleestak.” Ghettoputer appears to make his wishes known to Sleestak, although no one is sure whether this is the result of complex sign language, expert body posture reading, or simply beating Sleestak with a rubber mallet.

‘Puter suggests the Czar suck it.